But last week I suddenly had the desire to know what the new best software development books are. And I couldn’t find any such list. So, of course, I made it myself.

In this post I proudly present the Top 50 New Software Development Books, where new means “less than two years old”. This list was created using a weighed mix of the following criteria:

Number of ratings on Amazon.com

Average rating on Amazon.com

Number of ratings on GoodReads.com

Averate rating on GoodReads.com

Note: The time that has passed since a book’s release date was part of the calculation. For example: A book that got three 5-star ratings in just four months is listed higher than a book that got the same ratings in a much longer period of time.

Some other things worth pointing out:

Like in the previous edition, I ignored all technology-specific titles. Only books about generic software engineering topics were allowed on the list.

I discarded all re-releases of books that had earlier editions before 2007. The only exception is
Making Things Happen, because Scott Berkun changed the title of his book. And because he’s a nice bloke who granted an interview with me.

Thomas Erl is on this list three times (#6, #17, #24). He didn’t pay me for that, unfortunately. He just did it all by himself.